Cons:

Following the TV series "Lost" is a lot like being really into a videogame, albeit one that plays out over several years and meanders a hell of a lot. While the most prudent approach to the show is to probably just watch it and allow it all to play out, there's a good deal of ancillary content out there for the obsessive fan, and with all its embedded clues and narrative loose ends, the show does a great job of engendering obsession. This is the scene that Lost: Via Domus enters. The big question: how relevant is it in a fandom replete with people who will not balk at using hex decoders to parse information out of image files, or playback high-def DRV rips at super slow-mo in order to glean fleeting clues sewn into split-seconds of video? Let's just say that it has its work cut out for it.

In Via Domus, you play the role of an amnesiac photojournalist aboard the fateful Oceanic flight bound to Los Angeles from Sydney. Like most of the characters on the TV show, he's carrying a good deal of emotional baggage, which winds up getting him into some sticky situations on "Lost" island. As they say, though (and as Locke reiterates on a number of occasions), everything happens for a reason. Our protagonist did some pretty sketchy stuff, but as per its redemptive properties, The Island will offer him a chance to set things right.

Where the show is complex and often obtuse, the game based on it is anything but. Via Domus works under the assumption that the show's biggest fans probably aren't hardcore gamers. The controls are very simple, it's usually hard to die, and apart from a few scattered instances, you're never really at a loss as to where to go. You're typically going from one objective to the next, which entails interacting with notable characters from the show, "exploring" the island by means of a checkpoint system, and solving some highly-contrived puzzles. Via Domus realizes that its gameplay is ultimately in service to its story and paces its scenarios accordingly; you're never dawdling too long before the story kicks into gear, leading you to yet another jungle jaunt, chat session, or flashback scene.

It's really never a good sign, though, when a game's narrative elements are what you find yourself looking forward to the most. In most cases the gameplay is merely serviceable, undeniably lacking in creativity in a few key areas. The dialog sequences play it pretty straight. You're offered a set of queries for characters, for which they have a single reply; there are no dialogue trees to really expound on all the weird stuff going on. This may be due to the game's writers not wanting to utilize the stand-in voice actors any more than they had to. (Only a few of the characters are voiced by their TV counterparts, most notably Benjamin Linus, Juliet Burke and Desmond Hume). Some of them, like Jack and Kate, sound more or less okay. Those with more distinctive voices, like Sawyer and Sayid, are pretty bad. There are some notable omissions given the timeline in which the game is supposed to take place (from the first episode, till around the latter half of the second season), and a few instances of characters being poorly utilized to enable game functionality. Sawyer, specifically, has been reduced to a vending machine who spouts the occasional barb and mechanically insists that the handgun he has for sale is worth exactly 100 papayas.